Going Up: Project Highrise Is Now Actually Out

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“It’s Thursday,” Graham corrected me earlier today as I chatted about the usual Wednesday stuff – hanging myself from Yggdrasil, saying ‘hump day’ loads as if it’s hilariously smutty, etc. If I can’t even remember which day it is, what chance do any of us have of remembering that a game we reviewed way back on Tuesday is now actually released? Almost zero. The game in question is Project Highrise [official site], a simple but fairly pleasant skyscrape ’em up which kept Alec happily occupied for a bit. It is now actually out, released this afternoon. Consider yourself reminded.

“I know the words ‘Sim Tower’ are flickering hungrily across the hind brains of readers Of A Certain Age, but I should say off the bat that Highrise has the mentality of an idle or clicker game as much as it does a sim.

“In fairness, you tend to be busy dragging powerlines or placing offices most of the time – it’s not a matter of leaving the game to play itself for a while then coming back to reap the rewards a few hours later … But this is not truly a game of strategy, despite appearances and despite the inclusion of water pipes. It’s about waiting for cash to accumulate in sufficient quantities that you can build One More Floor.”

And here are some more:

“People are going to like it, because it achieves what it sets out to do and because it can yet be mined for greater efficiency of construction and weirder or more specialist designs, but right now I’m not expecting the break-out mega-success of a Factorio or Rimworld. It just doesn’t have the flex. Not yet, anyway, but the slick, compulsive, ever so slightly bland Project Highrise is certainly a strong foundation for the community to take it somewhere weirder and wilder.”

Project Highrise is out on Windows and Mac through Steam and GOG for £14.99/19,99€/$19.99 or thereabouts. It’s made by SomaSim and published by Kasedo Games. Somehow, they’ve managed to make these pictures… move?

I hope so, it’s another genre I’ve wanted to see a somewhat expanded version of the various flash based games around to appear, but I’m also doubtful it really adds that much in terms of gameplay to be worth £15. At £5 it would be much more of a thing I’d happily take a punt on and not be too annoyed if it turns out to be little better than one of the free flash things I could have played instead.

I don’t have the absolute answer or pretend to, but seeing as someone suggested £ as an appropriate price I had to chime in. That’s the price of *one* single cup of Norwegian mocha.

Sure, “worth it” is totally subjective, and it might be that you don’t want to shell out money for a game that might not be worth your *time*, but the notion that games aren’t “worth” 20 bucks seems so strange. Sure, you might not be willing to pay more than £5 or 10 or whatever amount fits your budget, but doesn’t that just reflect your budget priorities, and not in any way whether the game is worth 4 cups of coffee?

I never understand people who say games like this aren’t worth a *very modest* asking price.

It would make more sense to compare its price to other video games, rather than expensive Norwegian beverages. The two are incomparable. One is a tangible commodity the other a replicable digital good – the economics of both have little in common.

It’s expensive for what it is, when compared to similar products; it’s not a complex notion.

Mods will make or break this game, I think. Some really interesting stuff could come out of it.

One thing that annoys me in my short playtime so far is that placing wires and pipes and such is cheaper if you only click every second tile (and they still connect like normal). But placing them like that is way more annoying than simply clicking and dragging. Having the optimal way of playing be more annoying and tedious isn’t good game design.